The objective of for-profit corporations is to create value for shareholders.
Current expectations of future growth are already baked into the share price, thanks to financial markets being efficient at reflecting all available information about a company’s prospects in the price of its shares.
This means that to over-achieve and beat shareholder expectations, businesses need to continuously develop, improve and innovate. This applies to all businesses in competitive markets, and therefore any business loses pace risks being left behind by the innovations of other businesses.
Definition of company culture
The definition of company culture or organizational culture is the shared values, principles, ethics, and behaviors of a workforce. Culture can be top-down or bottom-up.
For example, the passionate vibe of Games Workshop staffers is driven by their collective enthusiasm about the hobby of collecting tabletop miniatures. Whereas the refined, professional attitude instilled in the interns of larger law firms is coached and enforced by the senior partners of those organizations.
When the working culture of a business embraces and encourages innovation and healthy-risk taking, then successful innovation and new ideas are the inevitable results.
So the question becomes, how can new elements which encourage experimental working practices and the pursuit of uncomfortable change be introduced effectively to working culture? Is it even possible to change the culture of an organization if it is deeply rooted?
4 Tips to Help Change Company Culture
Tip 1: Identity Change Champions
Not all businesses are full of people looking for a change. Change, for many employees (including happy and motivated ones), can give rise to feelings of uncertainty and doubt. If an employee has settled into a comfortable working environment, then any change could risk that.
This is why the tried and tested approach is to identify ‘change champions’ – change positive employees who are the most likely to understand and promote your new ideas and principles. Change champions are intentionally selected from all levels, giving employees at the junior and senior ranks a name and a face to associate with the new initiative and a point of contact to ask stupid questions.
Change champions can also help you refine your change leadership techniques, by acting as a focus group to test out your ideas before you roll them out across the whole organization.
Tip 2: Be Clear about the Upsides to the Employees
Many change initiatives in organizations are designed to improve productivity or profitability. That’s a simple truth. Because of this, you may find be difficult to generate much enthusiasm for a new way of approaching work or changing the company culture.
Therefore you should always articulate the benefit to the employee of the change in culture. For example, an increase in company sales would mean more employees and promotion opportunities for people at all levels in the career ladder.
Tip 3: Explore Different Mediums of Communication
Different employees are happier to listen to some forms of communication but not others. Some people really love a good story.
Oratory can be a great delivery mechanism that helps explain the reasons for change and the positive benefits. You could draw a comparison to topical and recent examples of successful change initiatives in other companies to bolster the initiative in your company.
Alternatively, others prefer to read and reflect upon an important message. A newsletter or similar gives you total control over the messaging and allows employees to digest and re-read the content at their own pace.
Tip 4: Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Changing company culture takes time and repetition. In the river of company culture, a single company-wide memo will barely make a splash. You can forget about changing the direction of the river!
Culture-change is vast, widespread and requires the buy-in and experimentation of many groups of people at all levels of a company. To bring all of these people on board, and to demonstrate that you are serious and persistent at leading this effort, you should repeat your core message as much as possible, inconsistent terms.
Employees may be skeptical about corporation communication and could be waiting in the wings to see if this is just another quick initiative that will be quickly forgotten. Your dogged repetition will reinforce the fact that this is here to stay.